By a Seminary Girl

This morning, I went to Bondi Beach with my mum. It was my first time seeing the Mitzvah tent and where the Chanukah attack happened. I was in Eretz Yisrael when the attack took place.

My mum was telling me stories about what happened, and we were looking at the small grass area from over the bridge.

There was this uneasy feeling in my stomach the whole time. One of the things that really got to me was how I remember coming to this beach as a place to calm down from all the stress in my life, and honestly, I felt so safe.

For many years, the beach was my comfort. I would wake up early and take public transport to go to the beach before school, and would stay late after school sometimes to watch sunset at the beach.

Looking at the grass area, I noticed the exact bench where people must have hid for shelter from the gunmen. This was a bench I came to sit at one day after school while I was studying. I remember sitting there and being able to just look at the water and people walking, and feel so at peace and able to unwind from all the stress in my life at that time.

When we say that some things will never be the same again, I felt that so strongly today. I don’t know if I will ever feel that same level of calm at Bondi Beach.

I still drive past and stop to look at the view. The water is beautiful, and I love the feeling of freedom and depth that the ocean holds, watching the waves crash with such vastness of water behind them.

There’s something to the way Hashem created the ocean that makes me feel so little, and like I’m only one creation in Hashem’s huge world, yet He chose me to be His’.

It’s currently the midst of the Nine Days and the week of Tisha B’Av. This time is the saddest time in the history of Am Israel, and unfortunately, we have had horrors and tragedy in our own lifetime too. It felt fitting to be going to the site of the Chanukah tragedy at this time period, if there was any time to go.

I was talking to my mum about the visit that seminary took us down south of Israel, and what the experience was like for me to walk through the places that were impacted the most on October 7.

These places look so small on a scale of how much darkness and horrors occurred. So many details didn’t make sense in my mind.

I kept thinking, “But how can it be?” “Is it really possible that nobody could’ve stopped them sooner?”

Silence.

There is a video of the Rebbe talking about the destruction of the Beis Hamikdosh, crying…

“The Yidden are in Golus, and the Shechina is in Golus with us.”

Hashem doesn’t want us to understand. He wants us to feel the pain and cry. Why?

We don’t know.

There are no answers.

I know for certain that Hashem runs the world. He decides what happens, and everything is in His hands.

This too must be His will, and in my heart, I know that He is crying with us too.

And so I sit here and cry. I cry for change. I cry for a better world. “אל אלה אני בוכייה, about these I cry.” (Eicha)

The Torah says: We must not allow Hashem to rest, so to speak, until “He establishes the praise of Jerusalem on earth.”

He wants us to cry. To cry out to Him for the pain to be no longer, to cry out from the depths of our hearts and beings for Moshiach, and to not stop until we see the rebuilding.

I firmly believe that through my little actions, through my shift in mindset and the choices I make, this world can move into the era of Moshiach.

I sat on a bench, just a few metres from the other one, and I davened Shacharis. I looked at the grass, where holy people lay, and I thought, “Hashem, send us MOSHIACH!”

I took on a hachlota to, bli neder, be more conscious with my brochos on food. To pause and properly thank Hashem for giving me sustenance. For the gift of life and the small moments that add up to many. I am so blessed. I have so much goodness in my life, and that’s what I will choose to focus on.

There is one famous quote from Rabbi Eli Schlanger HY”D: “When faced with anti semitisim, be more Jewish, act more, appear more Jewish.”

The message that I hear is that I must be proud of who I am, what I represent, and act more openly as a Jew. I have been blessed to grow up as the daughter of shluchim on shlichus, and I know that I must do whatever I can to have a positive impact on my surroundings.

May the tears we shed today become the tears that bring the Geulah. May this Tisha B’Av be celebrated in the Beis Hamikdosh with Moshiach, with every soul reunited, every wound healed, and Hashem’s presence revealed to the entire world.